Eligibility

Important Information

Student Involvement

The competition is for student-created, managed, and owned ventures. The guidelines are:

Students play a major role in conceiving the venture by having key management roles and owning significant equity in the venture.

Significant equity is 50 percent or more of the equity allocated to the management team and key advisors.

The objective of this rule is to exclude ventures formed and managed by non-students who have token student representation to compete in the investment circuit.

Team Composition

This is a competition for graduate students; teams with a minority of undergraduates can compete. Students from any graduate program (not just MBAs) are eligible to participate, including executive and evening format programs. Non-students may be members of the venture’s management team, and may participate in planning the venture. However, only students may participate in the competition.

Any team participating in an undergraduate competition, regardless of team re-configuration, is disqualified from the Venture Labs Investment Competition.

Student Enrollment

The competition is for students currently enrolled in graduate school. Executive or evening program formats are eligible in the next competition season following their graduation if they did not graduate on a traditional (month of May) graduation schedule.

Exceptions will be made for students who both formed their business venture for academic credit and graduated during the preceding summer and for students from universities south of the equator not having a traditional (month of May) graduation time frame.

Prior Activity

Ventures, and their base concepts, may compete for only one season in the Global Venture Labs Investment Competition or in any of the qualifying competitions. Also, ventures may not compete in any Global VLIC qualifying competitions after they have competed in the Global Venture Labs Investment Competition. Ventures that have generated revenue or raised equity capital from sources other than the members of the student team before the current academic year are excluded.

Begin here

The winners of participating investment competitions across the world receive automatic entry into the Global VLIC. To find more information about these eligible competitions, please visit this updated list: